CLEAN AIR

Clean air is essential for healthy plants, animals, and people. The Garden Club of America supported the Clean Air Act of 1970 and continues to support clean air initiatives that strengthen protections against polluted air across the country. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are pollutants subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. The Garden Club of America supports the transition away from polluting energy sources as we work to improve human health and reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the Earth’s atmosphere. Trees and plants can play a major role in cost-effectively filtering air pollution, reducing the temperature, and sequestering carbon and other greenhouse gasses, in addition to decreasing source pollution. The National Academy of Sciences has found that in certain poor air quality areas, plants and trees can reduce air pollution by more than 25 percent.

The Garden Club of America supports federal, state, and local legislation, policy, and individual action that address the following:

• Encourage reliance on the best peer reviewed science available to set air quality standards.
• Reduce particulate air pollution and key pollutants, including sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), and mercury (Hg), which impair air quality and adversely affect the habitat of all living things: plants, animals, and humans.
• Control emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and other greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere, to mitigate the impacts of climate change that pose a significant risk to biodiversity in the coming century.
• Address major sources of air pollution through an integrated strategy that may employ the use of incentives, regulation, improved energy efficiency, planting of trees and native plants, and greater reliance on clean energy sources.
• Significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from new and existing power plants and other stationary sources and improve fuel efficiency from mobile sources throughout the transportation sector.
• Retain and enforce the New Source Review, a key provision of the 1977 Amendments to the Clean Air Act, that requires old power plants to modernize their pollution controls whenever they make major repairs or renovations.
• Replace hydrofluorocarbons and other potent greenhouse gasses with alternatives that are safer for the ozone layer.
• Use the best technologies available in all applications to minimize air pollution and protect air quality.
• Use the best technologies available to monitor air quality and to alert people when levels of toxins exceed safe levels.